In Which We Share Our Agrarian Adventures

Winter

Hi y’all! It’s been a while. Sometimes I go through dry periods in my writing.

Things are going well here on the farm. January is a slower time for us and I have thoroughly enjoyed this season of rest, notwithstanding the bout with the stomach flu.

We’ve had a couple of calves born this month. One of the little heifer calves wasn’t doing too well in the cold and Dad took pity on her and brought her into the house to warm up in the farm kitchen. As soon as I saw Dad over at the calf barn I knew what he was planning. (He does have a soft spot for babies.) He set her down on wobbly legs on the kitchen floor while he heated the milk on the stove. The calf gently nuzzled any available pant leg as we crowded around cooing over it. (Yes, this household of girls will coo over babies, be they animal or otherwise.) The little calf stayed in the house all day and yes, all night too, curled up under the kitchen table! It stayed for about 24 hours until it was well and strong again.

We’ve also had kittens born recently. We are at an over abundance of kittens at present. The newest batch consist of three adorable, sassy balls of fur. They are getting to think they belong inside. I’ll not name names but SOMEONE (not me) has been allowing them to come inside while Dad and Will are off on a man-camping trip. The kittens present infatuation with the great indoors will be cut short very soon I’m afraid.

Broiler chicks are coming very soon! The 2015 growing season will be here before we know it! I look forward with excitement and anticipation to see what this year will hold.

The something about New Year’s Eve that elicits excitement in the heart. A chance to start afresh. The year is newly laid out before you like a fresh, crisp sheet of paper. Something always excites me about blank paper, I suppose it is because of the endless possibilities. Will it hold adventure? Surely! Disappointments? Undoubtedly. Will I grow through both? Yes, by His grace.

At the start of each year I like to make New Year Resolutions or “Bucket Lists”. A handful of things I’d like to do, areas I’d like to grow in. This year the items on the list range from relationship growth (Oh to love others like Jesus loves!) to how many book I’d like to read (150 to be exact!).

This year several of us kids decided that we’d really love to have a big bean bag chair. Katie and I used to have them when we were little kids and enjoyed them immensely (envision two little girls jumping off beds onto bean bags chairs) Well, we’re a little more sophisticated than that now and thought that the comfy chairs would come in handy for extra seating in our rooms.

Several of these were to be Christmas presents for this year. Katie and I volunteered to go and pick up the “Big Joe’s” from Wal-Mart. We hopped into my little car and drove off in high spirits.

Arriving at said store, we grabbed two carts and headed back to the household section. Once we started loading them into our cart, we realized that this was going to prove a bit trickier than we had first envisioned. I remembered the chairs from my youth as being a lot more flexible but at any rate we managed to stack/cram all five into two carts. Katie led the way with two in her cart and I brought up the rear with the last three, blindly bumping into displays until Katie took pity on me and led me in the right direction amid the stares of our curious fellow shoppers. (I couldn’t see over the tops of the blasted things!)

We paid for our goods and then hurried out to the car. Here’s where it really got tricky. Katie managed (with great difficulty!) to stuff three in the back seat while I crammed one into the trunk, but here we were stuck with one more that had to go somewhere. A friendly old gentleman offered to escort the remaining “Big Joe” to our house, but we politely declined, and wishing him the merriest of Christmas’s we managed to maneuver the last one on top of Katie in the front seat. As the driver, my vision was greatly impaired by all of the extra “Joes” in my car. We cracked the windows for air (it got stuffy!) and took the back roads home.

We’re counting our blessing over here after a scare yesterday involving a refrigerator shelf full of milk collapsing. A river of milk full of glass – yikes! We were so thankful that it happened to me and not to a customer. No one got hurt and we thankfully had enough milk to replace it all. I am very thankful. God is good!

We are excitedly preparing for Christmas tomorrow. My mom’s parents are coming over to spend the night and we have fun things planned. The business side of things is slowing down and we have more time for sitting around the cozy fireplace and working on hand projects. Blissful loitering! ;D

November has passed and with it the last of the Thanksgiving Turkeys! We are just about finished up with the processing of the poultry for this season with the exception of possibly doing a few stewing hens.

Thanksgiving was a relaxing, joyous one, spent with family and friends. We got our Christmas tree the Saturday after that and enjoyed putting it up together.

December is here and we’ve been busy with winterizing the farm, finding hay to feed the stock now that the pastures aren’t growing. We’ve built up quite a herd of heifers and have decided to sell a few to take the pressure of wintering them over on hay. Dad took pictures of them all and we put them up on our big white board and everyone gets to vote for the ones they’d like to keep. Of course, older kid’s votes count for more as they are able to weigh in on important factors such as, was their mama a good milk cow? Is she friendly? Etc. But it’s fun to all cast our vote.

We also have some fun social things lined up such as caroling, weddings and seeing the Christmas Carol in live production in Smithfield!